Happy mutation day!
by purplefern
Summary: Happy Mutation Day, turtles! The turtles celebrate their 16th Mutation Day, and their first one with April. But April is confused about what exactly Mutation Day is.


_Happy Mutation Day, turtles! 9/29/2013! _

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"Guys! Come into the kitchen, quick!" yelled Mikey from the entrance leading to the kitchen. Everyone stared at him from the Pit, then looked at each other and shrugged.

"What is it, Mikey?" asked April in a voice that said she was faking interest. The last time Mikey had wanted to show them something in the kitchen…. Well, let's just say that ended with Splinter making them wipe nasty-smelling goo off the walls and floor. April shivered; she didn't want to go through _that _again, even if Master Splinter didn't make her clean any of it up. (She had "Guest privileges").

"Just come in here! I promise that it's awesome!" There was a loud silence as the Turtles remembered the _last _awesome thing. Mikey frowned from the kitchen curtain. "I know what you're thinking, and I promise that that will never happen again. Will you please just come look?"

Raph gave a huge sigh, and stood up from where he had been feeding Spike, placing the normal turtle carefully on his shoulder. "If we don't look, he's just going to start being annoying as shell until we do. Let's just get this over with." Everyone else looked at each other and shrugged, then followed Raph to the kitchen.

"Alright Mikey, what is …." started Leo.

"TA-DA!" yelled Mikey triumphantly, as he held up a plate in front of Leo's face. "Made it from scratch myself! Happy Mutation Day!" Stepping back to get a better look, Leo, Raph and Donnie all gave a little gasp at the… the… MASTERPIECE that was on the plate in front of them.

"Is that a… cake?" asked Donnie.

"Yup" beamed Mikey with a proud smile. The three brothers stared at it in awe. This by far topped the cake of last year's Mutation Day, which could hardly qualify as a cake. Only by their standards. But this, this cake was a masterpiece. It was three layers tall, with white icing. But what were amazing were the decorations! On the cake, Mikey has somehow managed to make a picture of their mutation with icing. There was a teal puddle of icing, which was the ooze, and four pain-stakingly drawn turtles, each in a different color. Stuck around the picture were 16 mis-matching candles.

Tearing his stare away from the cake, Donnie looked at the smaller turtle in front of him, who proudly held the plate out in front of him. "Mikey…. Did you really make this yourself?" he asked with a slight mixture of disbelief and awe.

"I told you that I did, didn't I? So, are we going to eat this Mutation Day cake or what?" April watched the scene in amusement, finding the boys' awe at the cake kind of cute. But there was one thing bugging her…

"Guys, what exactly is mutation day?" They all looked at her, slightly startled, with all the drama about the cake, they had forgotten about April.

"Well," said Leo uncertainly, "Mutation Day is… Mutation Day. It's the anniversary of the day that we became what we are now."

"Ahh," said April in understanding. "So, it's like your Birthday." They all stared at her, and blinked.

"I don't know about that," said Mikey, setting the cake carefully on the kitchen counter next to where Raph had placed Spike, who stared at the cake and blinked slowly before turning back to his leaf, "But, of course Mutation Day is Mutation Day. What else would we celebrate?"

Ignoring the fact that it was a rhetorical question, Donnie rubbed his chin in thought. Looking down at the ground thoughtfully, he concluded, "Well, technically we could celebrate our hatching day. It's not the day we became us, but is the day that we became alive, except it wasn't exactly _us…" _

Mikey grabbed his head and gave an exaggerated groan, "Donnie, you just hurt my brain. Can we please just eat some cake?"

Ignoring Mikey's protests, Donnie kept rambling on, more thinking out loud than anything. "Then again, we really don't know the exact day that any of us hatched, so we'd really just end up picking a random date. I don't know, maybe mmmmmbbbffff!" Raph clapped a hand over Donnie's mouth, effectively shutting him up.

"Can we _please _eat cake now?" he complained, "I'm getting tired of just staring at it." Donnie mumbled something from behind Raph's hand, and Raph took it off of his little brother's mouth.

"That was so uncalled for, Raph" he complained.

Raph just shrugged, "Everyone was thinking it, I just did it."

"Anyway, what I was _trying _to say from behind this meat-head's sweaty hand was that: shouldn't we get Master Splinter first?"

"Yeah, we should" agreed Leo.

"And my dad" added April, "I bet he'd love some cake, if that's ok with you guys." Raph grumbled under his breath and stomped off to the exit of the kitchen.

"I'll get them. The faster we get their butts in here, the sooner we get to eat cake" he then shot a murderous glance at his brothers, "And don't any of you DARE to eat any of the cake without me, otherwise I'll kick your shells so hard that you'll hit the ceiling and the people topside'll feel it. Got it?" They all gulped, sure that Raph could pull through on his threat.

"Got it."

There was an awkward silence as Raph rushed out of the kitchen. After he left, Mikey looked over at April, and asked, "So, what's a Birthday?" April looked at him, thinking that he was joking. Did he really not know? But his face was just curiosity and confusion.

"Uh, it's the human equivalent of a Mutation Day. The anniversary of when we first came into the world."

"I get _that_. But why do you call it a Birthday?"

"Mikey," groaned Donnie in exasperation, "That's because humans don't hatch from eggs, or mutate. Well, not most of the time. Uh, I mean the mutation thing, no humans come from eggs. Uh well, I don't think, uh, shutting up now" he ended, quickly shutting down his train-wreck of a sentence.

April laughed quietly and shook her head in amusement. Those Turtles. Even after going through so much that year, they still managed to stay so naïve about some things.

"Alright, I got 'em!" yelled Raph as he rushed back in, all but dragging Mr.O'Neil. "Now can we eat cake?"

Splinter chuckled, walking in the kitchen behind Mr. O'Neil and Raph. "Calm down, Raphael. The cake will still be there in a few minutes."

Raph looked at him skeptically, then turned to everyone else, "Alright, everyone sit your butts down, and lets cut this cake already!" he ordered. Everyone scrambled to find a seat at the counter, and watched in anticipation, mouths watering, as Splinter dragged the knife down through the cake. He put the slices on plates, and passed them around the table. The second everyone had a piece in front of them, Raph quickly yelled, "Happy Mutation Day!" and ravenously dug into the cake.

"Happy Mutation Day" echoed the rest of the turtles, and dug into their own slices, no less enthusiastically than Raph.

Mr. O'Neil shot April a confused look, having missed the whole, "Mutation Day" conversation.

April patted his shoulder, saying, "I explain later. Let's just enjoy the cake."

"Sounds like a good plan to me" he replied, and happily ate his slice.

After finishing the cake, everyone sat back in their chairs and gave a group content sigh. Mikey sat up, and looking at Splinter asked, "Master Splinter, could you tell our mutation story again?"

"Michelangelo, you know the story, I told it last year"

"Yeeeaahh…. Buttt…" Mikey looked around the room, and rested his gaze on April and her dad, "April and her dad have never heard it" he said, pointing at them.

Donnie blushed at the thought of April hearing that story, "Mikey, I don't think April would want…"

"I'd love to hear it" she interrupted, "I'll be honest, I've always wondered, but was too embarrassed to ask."

Looking at the now two begging faces in front of him, Splinter smiled saying, "Very well. I will tell the story." He paused for a bit, and April shifted to get comfortable on her chair.

"The story starts when I came to live in New York from Japan. I had just gotten to America, and only had an apartment and a few other sparse belongings. My apartment was lonely and quiet, so one day, when I passed a pet store on my way home, I stopped to look to see if I could get a pet to cheer up my lonely house."

"This is the part where we come in" Mikey whispered loudly to April. Everyone shushed him, and Mikey ducked his head slightly in embarrassment. Splinter looked at him, the continued on with his story.

"The pet store happened to be having a sale on turtles then, and I had always had a special fondness for turtles…"

"That's cause turtles are the best, right Spike?" It was Raph that interrupted this time, and Mikey wasted no time in loudly shushing him.

"Ahem." Splinter cleared his throat, and everyone looked back at him expectantly. "Anyway, so I picked out four turtles to take home with me…"

"That was you guys!" Splinter looked at April, slightly exasperated and annoyed at being constantly interrupted. "Sorry. It won't happen again."

"Would you all please stop interrupting? So, I was walking home with my new turtles, and then I bumped into a man on the street. You now know them to be the Kraang. Something felt off about him to me, and so I followed him. I listened in to his conversation with another Kraang, and slowly turned to leave, when I heard a loud squeak. I had accidently stepped…on a rat, and the Kraang in the alley heard, and cornered me. I fought them, but as I kicked one of them, I made him drop a canister of green ooze. Mutagen. It splattered all over me, and I dropped my turtles, making them fall into the mutagen as well. The rest is history."

April sat quietly, absorbing everything that she had heard. "So, the Kraang have been here for 16 years now" she said quietly to herself, "Huh, a rat. So that's why…" she looked at Splinter, who's ears were slightly down as he stared at the table in thought, no doubt remembering back to that day, his last one as a human. She looked to the turtles, who also looked partially in thought. "So, do you guys remember any of this? You were there, technically."

Donnie, ever the technical one, was the first reply. "Of course not. We basically weren't even _born _when this happened. Well, I mean it was _us _but it wasn't…us."

"Donnie, please don't do this again. You hurt my brain enough the last time."

Donnie sent Mikey an annoyed glare, but continued on, "Plus, as normal turtles we were basically just hatchlings. So, we were _way _too little to remember any of this." April thought about that, and the day in general, and realized something else.

"You know what, guys? This is also the first day that we ever met, the day when you saved me from the Kraang."

"You're right, April" said Leo, "That makes this day even more memorable."

April smiled at the four turtles who had saved her life one year ago today, thinking about what they had been through since then. "Happy Mutation Day, you guys. I'm glad I met you all." Mikey grabbed her into a huge hug, and gestured for everyone else to join in. Leo and Donnie smiled (and Donnie looked ecstatic, but also nervous), and joined into the growing group hug. Raph rolled his eyes, and turned away from the group hug, but April grabbed his wrist, and pulled him into a hug, quickly trapping him. "Hey, let me out! Alright, bonding moment over! Guys, come on!" Raph's protests were drowned out by the laughter of everyone else, all of them knowing that this was the best Mutation Day ever.

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_Yeah, I don't even know what happened with this. Everytime I'm like "Oh, I'll just write a short one-shot". And then it shoots off in some other direction and becomes 2,000 words long. Just…hope that you enjoyed my randomness. R&R _


End file.
